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Today's showcase includes one design narrative and a challenge. The design narrative is Sandie Gay's Learning Design course for FE teachers. As Bob said, "you only learn it when you teach it". So Sandie is planning to teach Learning Design to Further Education professionals. Apart from our delight at seeing her spread the gospel, and our satisfaction at seeing her make the knowledge of the MOOC our own, we see an inherent value in open resharing and reuse. Whenever you take learning design and apply it to a new context, you are bound to evaluate it, refine it, and most likely - improve it. Reuse is evolution.

So here's the challenge: have you, or have you witnessed someone else, or are you planning to reuse some of the OERs, practices or ideas from this MOOC? Tell us about it in response to this thread, or in a cloud in the Beyond OLDS MOOC cloudscape.

Today's showcase is a bit unexpected. Or maybe not. Given that this is a MOOC on learning design, it's not surprising we have quite a few experienced and highly critical educational specialists on board, some of which are very articulate in expressing their feedback. Bob's blog comes to mind as an example.

Some of the design narrative were in fact closer to an evaluation of our learning design than a reflection on your's. Fair enough. We did highlight evaluation in week 7, and did suggest that when you review someone else's design - both of you learn from the experience. So for today's showcase we chose Itana Gimenes learner narrative (and learning journal) and Helen Crump's blog post. Helen even went as far as submitting this blog post as evidence for her reviewer badge...

Needless to say, you're still invited to continue discussing the previous showcase items, and of course - share your own narratives. We're particularly interested to hear about your projects. Of course they are still in draft form, but that's what makes them interesting, and what would make any feedback you receive more valuable.

Today's theme is "MOOCing about". Quite a few of you joined this MOOC out of, let's be honest, an interest in the MOOC phenomena. And in the spirit of "learning by design", we're seeing a few projects which are aimed at designing MOOCs or MOOC related learning experiences. Today we've chosen to showcase two of those: Penny Bentley's #MOOCskills Project (and her animated design narrative) and Tiffany Crosby business psychology MOOC (note the links at the bottom of her narrative).Both of these design narrative provide a nice sample of their design outputs - so there's a lot for you to review and comment on. But it would also be interesting to hear more about the process - how did Penny and Tiffany arrive at their design? Did they use the OULDI cards? The PPC? Personas? Ecology of Resources? Did they find and remix OERs?

Thanks to everyone who has commented on Helen and Jane's narratives. You can still continue the conversation there, and on the open list. You don't all have to be so polite - ask them some hard questions! demand to see their designs!

One of the personas that we worked with when designing the MOOC was an individual who is already working on a project, and brings that project to the MOOC. This has advantages and drawbacks, as these narratives demonstrate. Do have a look and respond to them. Be supportive, but be critical and inquisitive - if you would like to hear more details about their projects, and how OLDS MOOC tools and activities contributed to their design, ask!

And of course, its not too late to add your own design narrative or comment on and favourite others. In particular, please post your designs (in the form of design narrative or otherwise) so that your fellow participants can review them - you'll get feedback, they get a badge.

The first two design narratives we will be showcasing are Helen Crump's and Jane Challinor's learner narratives. See also Helen's learning journal and Jane's portfolio. Tomorrow we will be looking at designer narratives - which tell the story of a project you worked on. But today we decided to start with the learner experience of participating in OLDS MOOC. You might find that these stories resonate with yours, or that they appear to be about a different MOOC than the one you took. Indeed, it is interesting to see two participants who have worked together, and yet they report on such a different experience. But we believe that like us you will appreciate the openness and honesty of these accounts.

So please, comment on their clouds - and discuss any emerging cross-cutting issues in the open group.

This is it - the final week of OLDS MOOC. The aim of this week is to allow you to catch up on any bits you may want to go back to, look back together at the journey we've done, and look forward to our next learning / design initiatives.

Most of this week is dedicated to the Showcase, a rolling "show and tell" session. Each day, we will choose two of your narratives and invite all the OLDS MOOC community - facilitators and participants as one - to review them (by the way, here's an opportunity to earn your reviewer badge). Some of these will be designer narratives, telling the story of your learning design project. Others will be learner narratives, telling your story as a learner. Either way, we invite everyone to comment on the showcased clouds, and we will also start a thread in the open group to discuss any emerging cross-cutting issues. You can also use #oldsmooc_sc to tweet / G+ about the showcase activity.

On Tuesday we will have our convergence session, which will also be included in the open education week programme. Details will follow. On Wednesday we will launch our end-of-mooc survey, and we will be presenting some initial thought about OLDS MOOC at the OU's eLearning Community event, which will also be broadcast as part of open education week.

All the resources, pages, clouds and cloudscapes we created will be available for as long as the servers live, and we are very happy for you to remix and reuse anything you find useful (but we'll be even happier if you tell us). The open group will stay open for some time. But more about life after OLDS MOOC next Wednesday.

Week 8 is nearly over, and the final week of OLDS MOOC around the corner! More about that in a separate email, but for now - a quick recap of the passing week.Your design narratives keep flowing in (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2867), some of them drawing in significant interest (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/8133) and some experimenting with new formats (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/8201). At the convergence session yesterday someone asked if "they missed the train for writing their narrative" - most certainly no! In fact, you haven't missed the train for contributing to the dreambazaar if you wish to, and we will try to keep an eye out for evolving discussions over the next few weeks. As for the design narratives, we will soon select two for tomorrow's showcase, but you can still contribute (and may be selected) for later next week.

The other main activity for this week is also still in progress, and might even be gathering steam as we speak. The Larnaca Declaration debate (https://groups.google.com/d/topic/olds-mooc-open/9PncEGmeugU/discussion) is raising questions about musical notation, the role of institutions vis. Learning Design,design vs. orchestration, and Instrcutional Design vs. Learning Design.

Finally, we had a great convergence session yesterday (http://www.olds.ac.uk/the-course/week-8-reflect/converge) with among other things, we discussed improvisation - in teaching and in learning. To demonstrate the point, the "fishbowl" participants had to improvise and host themselves every time the OU team disappeared due to technical glitches.

Next week will be dedicated to collaborative reflection and wrapping up. We will have a showcase, a convergence session, and a public talk which is part of open education week. And in case you are already thinking about where to take your OLDS MOOC experience next - there's a cloudscape for that (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2879)!

Please do continue posting your stories and commenting on others, but tomorrow the main focus shifts to the Larnaca declaration. Already Will asks an interesting question: how will learning and teaching institutions change if the Learning Design approach moves to centre stage (https://groups.google.com/d/topic/olds-mooc-open/9PncEGmeugU/discussion)? What are your thoughts on this, or any other aspect of the declaration?

This week (http://www.olds.ac.uk/the-course/week-8-reflect) is about reflection: your reflection, as participants and the Learning Design community's reflection, as manifested in the Larnaca declaration (more about that in a couple of days).

That doesn't mean the MOOC is over. Reflection is not a post-mortem of learning, it is an important part of learning. In the words of C. S. Lewis: “First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”

If you have been working through a project, this could be a "designer narrative"; the story of what you were trying to achieve in your project, and the progress you've made so far. If you don't have a project then you can share your "learner narrative"; the story of your journey as a learner.

Don't be shy, and don't apologise: we all started with the best intentions and then life had its say. It doesn't matter if you planned to do ten times as much as you did. What matters is what you did, and what you learned along the way.

"Week 7 – Evaluate" of the OLDS MOOC has come to a close, and we suppose it is time to pause and EVALUATE it. The good news is that we have seen strong evidence of people accessing the various resources associated with this week such as the evaluation tools and the formative evaluation paper. Further good news is that some of the participants have posted some very thoughtful efforts to identify good evaluation design and questions as well as a few actual detailed evaluation plans. You can still visit, comment on other's experiences and contribute your own at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2864. The Convergence session yesterday was quite engaging, and we wish to thank the participants, especially Briar Jamieson whose thoughtful comments enriched the conversation. The conversation is still flowing at https://groups.google.com/d/topic/olds-mooc-open/jR-foXarVYQ/discussion.

And some questions we still need to explore: not as many as we expected posted their evaluation plans or results. Is this because you are hesitating to share? Because you feel your project hasn't reached that stage? Is there a lesson here about evaluation, as a topic, or about MOOCs as a medium? Please use our feedback form to share your views - http://www.olds.ac.uk/feedback

But really, the bad news is that the week has come to an end so quickly, and we are feeling that there is so much more we could share in this community about evaluation. Frankly, we could have had a whole MOOC focused on evaluation (um, that's an idea...), just as we could run separate MOOCs for each of the other major facets of learning design (e.g., a whole MOOC on finding and integrating OERs). But just because the week focused on evaluation has ended does not mean that participants should cease their efforts to focus formative evaluation strategies on their still emerging learning designs. And as that work continues, we’ll be available to help as best we can.